Claude maker Anthropic PBC is in talks with Alphabet’s Google for a multi-billion dollar deal that would provide the artificial intelligence (AI) company with additional computing power and access to Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs), Bloomberg reported citing sources.
The deal, which could go into “tens of billions of dollars”, as per the report, has not yet been finalised and is in the negotiation stage. Notably, Google is a previous investor in, and cloud provider for, Anthropic.
As per the report, both Anthropic and Google declined to comment.
Shares of Google jumped 2.3 per cent at market open on October 22, while that of Amazon.com, also an Anthropic investor and cloud provider, fell by 1.5 per cent, it added.
Anthropic closed $13 billion funding round for valuation of $183 billion
Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, San Francisco-based Anthropic is best known for its Claude family of large language models, which compete with OpenAI’s GPT models. Like its peers, Anthropic has been raising significant sums to keep pace in a race to advance AI, which industry leaders say will require more resources for research and breakthroughs, as well as consumer demand.
Anthropic recently held early funding talks with Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX, about a month after closing a $13 billion funding round. That financing, led by Iconiq Capital, with Fidelity Management and Research Co. and Lightspeed Venture Partners as co-leads, nearly tripled Anthropic’s valuation to $183 billion, including dollars raised.
Google previously invested about $3 billion in Anthropic; the tech giant committed to invest $2 billion in the AI startup in 2023, and followed up with another $1 billion investment early this year. Amazon has committed to invest about $8 billion in Anthropic, which is a key AI customer of Amazon Web Services, and a major user of Amazon’s custom AI chips.
(With inputs from Bloomberg)